I felt ashamed of Ol’ Wonky Girl, especially the first time I looked at her two days post-surgery when there was still severe bruising; my boob looked like if you took an abandoned baked potato that you found in a CVS parking lot and stapled it to my chest. I cried so hard after looking in the mirror that night that I woke my boyfriend up. I was 100 percent sure that he was not going to want to have sex with me and my tater tits ever again. I never let him see my boob until it was fully healed because sometimes you can’t unsee stuff and what if we’re having sex and he keeps thinking of my innocent boob at her very worst?
Eventually, this medical drama abated. Potato tit healed and I moved on to fighting with my insurance about the reconstruction. I had a cool ten months where the worst problem I had was severe neck and shoulder pain from TMJ that made two separate doctors ask if I had been in a serious car accident.
And then my vagina was ready to take center stage.
It started with a regular-degular run-of-the-mill UTI, so I naively thought. I went to an urgent care center because, as mentioned above, gynecologists are in short supply and UTIs hurt like a motherfucker. I have a pretty high tolerance for pain; I have no tolerance for chronic discomfort. I would much rather a very painful four-second spasm happen every two hours than an all-day background pain. UTIs give you both.
If you have never had a UTI, don’t talk to me ever. Even if you’re a close friend or family member. We have nothing in common and I have nothing to say to you. Just joking! For real, though: if you’re a close friend or family member and you’ve read this far into my essay on vaginas, sorry we can’t talk anymore.
Look, I’m a responsible sex-haver. I know about peeing postcoitus to try to avoid UTIs. I know The Rules. Sometimes things happen, though. Bodies are shitty and I was fine with that truth. I got my antibiotics and went on my merry little way. The problem: my UTI did not. Oh no! She stuck around. I went to another urgent care (you have to play doctors off one another!) and spent fifty dollars to have them tell me that I was fine and that maybe the antibiotics just needed longer to work. I’m not a doctor, but I do not think that’s a thing.
Still, she was sticking around. Again, painful, annoying, nightmare shit. For weeks. Imagine feeling like you have to pee the worst you’ve ever had to pee in your life 24/7 and no matter how much you try to go it doesn’t help. It’s like the food-turning-to-ash curse in the Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl.
Finally I went to a urologist who specialized in erectile dysfunction and he was like, “Maybe you have an overactive bladder,” which is, if you don’t know, a very real and scary health problem because guess what? There’s no cure and sometimes medicine doesn’t fix it. And the medicine that does fix it has been linked to causing Alzheimer’s later in life. I was trying to be twenty-six, flirty, and thriving!! Not to have a bladder issue!!
I’m going to skip the boring parts of this tale, but basically, I did not have an overactive bladder despite taking strong medications that may later cause a rift in my family when I eventually get Alzheimer’s and some of my children want to put me in a care facility and the other children don’t think they can afford it. But I kept coming back to this doctor who kept prescribing me higher and higher doses of this fairly risky drug that gave me such severe dry mouth that I lost my voice a bunch and had to buy gels and lozenges to be able to talk. On top of this, because I didn’t have the issue that he was prescribing medicine for, I wasn’t feeling any better. It turns out that I had chronic UTIs that magically no one was testing me for. At a fucking urologist’s office.
Finally—FINALLY—by the grace of some god somewhere, I found a uro-gynecologist who specializes in vagina-pee problems rather than dick-pee problems and he was straight up with me and told me this little fact: many, many, many people with vaginas will have a year or so in their twenties where they just get chronic UTIs and yeast infections and then eventually it goes away and the best thing you can do is treat them as they come and stop eating sugar.VI
Every time I took the medication for UTIs, it made my body go fucking nuts and I got a yeast infection from it. Is this too much info? I don’t know! Probably! It took this Fairly Good Doctor and me a year to get my body to calm the fuck down and not have a nonstop UTI. And neither of us know what actually changed! No idea! The problem could be comin’ back ’round the mountain at any moment.
After all the shit I went through with my body—two tumor removals, not having sex for a while because I was so afraid that I would get another UTI, a suggested bladder surgery, having to put pills up my vagina for months on end (which is just funny)—when my doctor finally admitted, “We have no idea what’s happening with your body, sorry,” that was the moment that made me finally feel a blip of connection to womanhood, or non-cis-male-hood. This was it! After a year that included nineteen doctor’s appointments for my vagina alone. NINETEEN. The only thing I want to do nineteen times a year is go to Target. What it took was being told, “Yeah, your body is a mess. We give up. Good luck. We don’t know. But it happens to lots of people!” for me to finally feel a real kinship to womanhood via my body.
A perfect example of the dismissal of women’s health as important is the wildly racist and misogynistic history of the speculum—a tool I’ve now had inside of me more times than I can count. Speculums haven’t been updated much since 1847, when a piece-of-shit slave-owning doctor started using gravy spoons to look up the vaginas of the women he enslaved, despite being vocally disgusted with the body part. The speculum that he eventually “invented” is basically the same thing we use today. What other medical devices haven’t been updated since then? Why are people stuck getting chronic UTIs in their twenties for months on end with no solution other than waiting it out? If cis men were getting UTIs and yeast infections this often, I have no doubt medical care would have advanced to address those issues—as it should! Why are women’s symptoms of heart attack mostly unknown to the general public? Why do Black women have astronomically higher maternal death rates than white women? Why does Plan B not work reliably for women over 175 pounds? Why is women and femmes’ pain and especially the pain of Black women, indigenous women, disabled women, obese women, LGBTQ+ women not taken seriously?
Having your pain be ignored or misdiagnosed or minimized, it turns out, is way more intrinsic to the female experience than a body part could ever be. The reason that so many women are writing about boobs and vaginas in books—about bodies in general, actually—is because while our bodies are objectified and sexualized to the point where they become a synecdoche for us, they aren’t actually cared for. When we try to get care for our bodies, when they don’t work, when they cause us pain, society loses interest. We all have been dismissed and belittled at doctor’s offices, often with incredibly serious consequences. The story of having horrible pain that goes undiagnosed, or having a body issue that we’re asked to be quiet about because it’s not “polite” (miscarriage, pelvic pain, endometriosis, gender-affirming surgery, mastectomies, breast reductions, etc.) is an experience so common it has become a trope. I mean, the French Open banned the type of outfit Serena Williams played in—a catsuit she wore to help prevent blood clots. This right here is the common bond: your body is your entire worth, but also it’s not worth keeping healthy, cared for, pain-free. This is why there’s always a chapter.
There Were Two Different Songs Called “Miss Independent” in the 2000s. Why Is No One Talking About This?
The first time I ever made out with my boyfriend Dave, we were both… pretty drunk. It’s very difficult, although certainly not impossible, to make out with a close friend while sober. I’d had a crush on him for a month or so at this point, and we’d been friends almost a year; we were walking in a group from a bar to a friend’s house at the end of a long night of drinking. A very common romantic setting, obviously! And by the time we got back to her house we were making out. Everyone was blitzed and we were not sneaky whatsoever and we found a back bedroom and kept making out
and finally he was like, “Do you want to come back to my place?” No one had ever asked me that in person before, and of course I was like, “FUCK YES ARE YOU JOKING WITH ME?” So we went back to his place and hooked up and then the next day all our friends hung out again and I was like doot doot doot, I’m just going to play it off like I didn’t wake up at Dave’s house and be super chill about this whole situation and say NOTHING. We all watched Straight Outta Compton and I don’t remember a single minute of that film because I was freaking out about sitting next to Dave after having slept with him the night before.
For the next month or so, we started hanging out multiple times a week and hooking up fairly frequently, but I always felt like I was the one taking the initiative, and therefore I felt like I clearly liked him more and that he might not be into me. Also, I had been told pretty much all my life that men didn’t want serious relationships, so I was like, “Okay, cool. I’ll be chill about this and not mention dating.” Except the problem became that I really, really, really liked him and I was like, “I don’t want to date other people and I don’t think I want you to date other people.” But I didn’t say that to his face. Because I had never had an “Are we exclusive?” talk before and I was dreading it. Plus, again, it didn’t seem chill and I really wanted to impress him. Even though this was well past my college chill-girl phase (by about one year), I still found myself frequently reverting to the (wrong) opinion: that I needed to be low-maintenance in order to not scare him off. Eventually, I gave up on him bringing the topic of exclusivity up and I had my best friend Emilee sit on my bed and practice, using the voice memos app, the conversation I wanted to have with him.
She made me repeat what I wanted to say again and again until I got it right and until I wasn’t being apologetic or meek or a doormat, which is a very good-friend thing to do. So the next time I saw him, I was like, “Listen, bitch! We should date exclusively!” (I did not say it like that.) And he was like, “Oh, that would be wonderful. I’ve been wanting that.” And I demanded to know—because I was amped up from Emilee hyping me up and from him agreeing to date me—“Okay, why didn’t you ask me, then?” And he looked at me very confused and said, “Because it seemed like you didn’t want that.”
I assumed he was taking his cues about my desires from my Twitter, where we knew each other from originally. I certainly talked a lot on there about hating men and not wanting commitment or to date anyone, which was mostly true except for this guy, whom I did want to date. I was miffed that he’d taken my Twitter persona so seriously, even if it was fair of him to do. So I said that. And then I was like, “You could have just asked me what I wanted.” And he looked even more confused and he explained, “Well, the very first night that we ever made out, you stopped kissing me, pulled back, and said, ‘Just so you know, I’m not looking for anything serious.’ So I took that as your stance.”
Yeah, he hadn’t been reading my Twitter for clues at all because he’s a normal-ass person. No, I had apparently told him that I didn’t want anything other than a friends-with-benefits situation. Only I didn’t remember saying that specifically. As soon as he said that I had said as much, I was like … Okay, well… that does sound exactly like a thing I would say and do. Every single time I told a friend that story, they were like, “Yeah, that sounds like you, Sophia.”
The thing is, I grew up believing that the worst thing that a woman could do is be needy, and by that I mean have needs. I had seen the women around me get left by men because they were too “difficult.” (At least, that’s what I had thought I had seen.) I wasn’t particularly afraid of being left; to be honest, I figured I would survive that. I was beyond that fear. I was afraid of needing anyone at all, ever. See, if you don’t need anyone, it doesn’t even matter if they leave you. Even better, if you never commit to anyone, they can’t leave you and you don’t have to leave them and there’s none of this sad, drawn-out-endings business.I But beyond that, if you’re a woman and you don’t commit to anyone, if you don’t need anyone… you’re cool.
Obviously that’s not actually true at all, but that is what I believed because I was about twenty-three years old and twenty-three-year-olds believe stupid things.II I believed being “independent” was cool not because I was a massive dolt, but because I had been told that thousands of times across pretty much every media platform imaginable. There are infinite TV shows and songs and movies and books about the lives of young single women and how being single is about freedom and power, and that needing a partner or having a “happy ending” is sappy and feminine (in a bad way, of course).
We’ve got this idea that the way to address inequality between men and women is to ask women to be more like men, and therefore no longer need men. Of course, not everyone even dates or is attracted to men, so the messaging to women really becomes: Provide everything for yourself. If you’re really a strong woman—which is the apparent goal of this oversimplified imitation of feminism—you won’t debase yourself by wanting romance. Sex, perhaps, but not emotional intimacy. To want a partner, to actively make moves to commit to a partner, is painted so frequently as weak and bad. The “strong” thing to do, according to this hyper-capitalistic fantasy of girl power, is to give your everything to your career. Settle for anything less than that, we tell young women, and you’re compromising your goals and dreams for the sake of someone else. God forbid your goal is a loving partnership. Good women are strong women, per this encyclical. And strong women are above love.
Strong women, too, conveniently behave much in the same way men behave. Coincidence? Probably not! Modern women are encouraged to want sex, but not commitment, to never stay over the night after a hookup, to not want to get tied down right now, to never have even contemplated getting married, to focus on their careers, to not call or text too much, to eschew romantic gestures. Don’t get me wrong, there are a lot of pieces of that that apply to me.III But I think a lot of the reasons I have the proclivities I do is because I was taught that operating more like a guy in almost every arena, especially romantically, was better, preferred. The reality is, though, that men get lauded no matter what they do. If men don’t want to date, they’re bachelors (which is cool), and if they do date a lot, they’re players (which is cool), and if they date someone long-term and they’re committed, they’re a good partner (which is hot and still cool). They don’t lose anything by partnering up or staying single; meanwhile, it’s pretty much lose-lose for women.
While you can’t say that you want to date someone or get married or start a family—which would be sad and pathetic and needy—you also can’t totally eschew that stuff forever, which would be sad and pathetic and lonely. As a woman, you’re asked to be open to having casual sex without commitment for a bit, but not too long, and then you must magically find someone to date seriously and eventually marry (while being chill about it!!!!) before you’re too old. Ideally you did not express any desire to get married (embarrassing); your partner brought it up! You weren’t even sure you ever wanted to get married! You’re a chill girl!
The other day I was watching Selling Sunset because everyone I know watches it and I don’t want to feel left out ever. On the show, a woman who was in her early thirties and who had been dating her boyfriend for years expressed publicly that she wanted to get married soon, and that she was hoping for her boyfriend to propose. I felt embarrassed for her. My initial knee-jerk thought was, “Why would you admit that on TV?” I had an initial gut reaction of “WE DON’T TALK ABOUT THAT!” As if it might make some other off-screen guy feel uncomfortable or pressured.
Marriage and weddings expose some of the most glaring double standards for how we treat women and romance. If you are a man who expresses that he would like to get married one day, perhaps to the person you’re dating, perhaps just in general, first of all, you’re brilliant, because marriage is a very good arrangement for straight men. But second of all, you will get treated in one of two ways: “Awww he’s so sweet.” Or, “Wow, your female partner must
have pressured you into this.” If you are a woman who says that she’s interested in marriage, the narrative is that you are either dragging your unwilling partner down the aisle kicking and screaming—a dynamic you can even get as a cake topper!—or that you’re some pathetic bundle of need who wants a man more than a career,IV a woman who is desperate to have children, which is somehow sad for reasons that are mostly unclear.V
There used to be a café near my boyfriend’s apartment, where I was basically living at the time because that is what new couples are like, sorry. Anyway, we’d walk to this café and every time we’d pass a high-end wedding-dress shop. I did everything in my power to not look at the wedding-dress shop, in order to not make things weird, which of course probably made things much weirder. I was terrified that my then new boyfriend might find out that I knew about matrimony. Like if I glanced at a wedding dress in a shopwindow he might bolt, or worse, have a long, sincere conversation about how he isn’t ready for that yet, but that he understood I was obsessed with getting hitched. And I would have to be like, “No, no, no, I don’t want that either. I’m not into freak shit like holy matrimony! I’m normal and want things on a normal timeline. I hadn’t even remembered that it was possible for us to get married ever. That truly had never occurred to me. I didn’t even know those were wedding dresses, honestly. I thought this shop just had a thing for the color white and intricate beading.”
And even that avoidance of shopwindows made me feel shitty, because so what if I wanted to get married? So what if he thought I wanted a wedding someday? The semi-reasonable part of my brain knew that what I was doing was a ridiculous charade. I wanted to look at the wedding dresses, not because I had any interest in getting married immediately to this specific guy (and who cares if I did?) but because they were ass-ugly and I wanted to judge them. It’s nice to judge consumable goods being presented to you. The best part of going to the movies is the trailers and sitting there getting to be like, “Never in one million years would I see that!” Or, “Yes, bitch!! If I don’t see a heist movie starring Marisa Tomei opening day I will die.” Let me look at wedding dresses that cost more than my car and decide if I hate them in peace!
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